"This facility is designed with the best technology," Dilkens said during the official opening. "It's designed to accommodate all the people who need to be in the room providing information, feeding information, looking at information and making decisions in real time"

The 13,800 square-foot building houses the city's Emergency Operations Centre, two truck bays and living quarters for up to eight firefighters and two captains.

The emergency centre includes a large policy room where many screens line the walls.

"What that allows us to do is take information in from a number of sources," said Laforet. "We have a 64-port switch here which means we can take in multiple feeds from whether it's television, whether it's an internet feed, whether it's a snow plow program that facilities use or traffic cameras, and we can take that information here and display it on any of these screens."

The Emergency Operations Centre at Fire Hall No. 6 will be the base for the city's disaster response. (Dale Molnar/CBC)

Laforet said in the event of an emergency, the room is large enough so that all necessary parties will have space to work, research, and execute an action plan. He said that depending on what happened, people in that room during a disaster could include police, fire and rescue teams, city engineers, social workers, hydro or gas experts, and those people bring assistants.

"What it brings for us is efficiency," said Laforet, adding that the technology and space to work is key for coming up with a quick action plan in the event of a disaster.

He added the response centre is equipped to handle a variety of situations "from a relatively localized event such as a fire to something more widespread like a flood or a tornado"

Dilkens said as per an environmental assessment, Provincial Road needs to be expanded to accommodate traffic, but there are no concrete plans for that expansion at this time.

"So we've got Cabana Road is sort of the first priority making sure we have the right width there and the right space there to move to the new hospital location, but in terms of Provincial Road that is something that is on the books, ready to go once the funding is available."